Jul 22 2008

Seaton Hackney Stables

While people know me from all over the internet and in real life, a lot of people know me best for my long stint as a horse back riding instructor at Seaton Hackney Stables in Morristown, NJ. I taught quite a few classes over the years and was the Assistant Director of their Summer Horsemanship Program for many years. While I don’t necessarily remember all of the names of every one of my many students, I do have a lot of great memories from those years.

I started riding at SHS when I was 7 years old (the minimum age limit was 8 but my mother begged and pleaded) and worked there until I was in my mid 20s so I was at SHS for over half of my life.

Seaton Hackney Stables is still open but most of us old timers have a very hard time supporting it with our business since the Morris County Park Commission drove the original management of SHS out of business by forcing them to close for 3 years under the guise of “renovations” which conveniently didn’t start until after the original owners were out of money. They did this to force the original management out and to put their own company in and this company is in charge of the stables now. While I understand that business is business, I have never been comfortable with the sleezy way that they did this. If you are interested in the new SHS, they have a blog available here but it is a very different place then what we remember.

I keep in touch with a lot of the other instructors as well as my fellow riding “classmates” including Myndi Smither, the barn manager and general Queen of Seaton Hackney Stables. Myndi is currently teaching but is also working on her artwork. As many SHS alumni know, Myndi is a great artist and is the artist behind the horse jumping over the H in SHS logo we all wore on T-shirts for so many years.

I was on the phone with her just the other day and she mentioned that she has a website for her art now. The conversation then went like this:

Me: What’s the url?
Myndi: I don’t know. Whenever I want to look at my website, I just Google my name. 

Technology wizard she is not. But I thought other SHS alumni would like to check out her website and since she certainly doesn’t have the means to promote it herself, I thought I would share The Art of Myndi Smithers.

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